An Ode To You: A Literary Reading with New York-based Sudanese writers

Daad Sharfi is a poet and immigrant-rights advocate from Chicago, by way of Sudan. She earned a BA in economics and another in ethnicity, race and migration from Yale University. She is an alum of Winter Tangerine and Cave Canem workshops and won a Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium fellowship in 2020. Her work has been featured in the 20.35 Africa anthology, Sawti, the Drinking Gourd, PANK and elsewhere. Currently, she lives in Brooklyn and is pursuing her JD at NYU Law, where you'll often find her daydreaming in class about the endless possibilities of language.

Dalia Elhassan is a Sudanese-American poet and writer based in NYC. She is the author of In Half Light, a chapbook in the New-Generation African Poets Series (Sita) published in collaboration with Akashic Books and the African Poetry Book Fund. Her work is featured in a number of publications, including The Kenyon Review, The Oakland Arts Review, and Rattle #59. She is the recipient of the Hajja Razia Sharif Sheikh Prize for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Mayada Ibrahim is a literary translator, editor, and writer based in Queens, New York, with roots in Khartoum and London, working between Arabic and English. Her translations have received the inaugural PEN Presents x International Booker Prize grant and the English PEN Translates Award, and she has been awarded the MacDowell Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Dolce Stil Criollo, The Common, Words Without Borders, A Perfect Vacuum, and Willows House in South Sudan. She is the managing editor at 52 Walker, a David Zwirner gallery. Previously, she worked with Tilted Axis Press and Bloomsbury Publishing (BQFP).

Mohammed Zenia is a Sudanese/Eritrean poet. They are the author of Tel Aviv, James Baldwin’s Lungs in the 80s and Black Bedouin. Their work has appeared in e-flux, the Poetry Project and 240 magazine, among other publications.

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is a focused survey of work by the New York-based Sudanese artist and master printmaker Mohammed Omer Khalil (b.1936). The exhibition presents a selection of his paintings and printed works spanning six decades, employing collage and offering tribute to the scenes, sounds and syntax influential to Khalil’s visual language.

The multi-venue exhibition is curated by Amina Ahmed and Jenna Hamed in partnership with the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, in addition to partners at Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia; Arab American National Museum, Dearborn; Maqam Studio, Brooklyn; Jay Seven Inc, Brooklyn.

About EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop

Incorporated in 1992, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) is dedicated to providing artists across all disciplines with space, tools, and a cooperative forum for the development of individual practice. After awarding 107 grants in its early years, EFA transformed its impact in 1998 by acquiring a twelve-story building in Midtown Manhattan, creating a permanent hub for long-term artist support, collaboration, and innovation.

Founded in 1947 by visionary artist and master printer Robert Blackburn, the Printmaking Workshop is the longest-running community print shop in the United States. Celebrated for its spirit of collaboration and inclusivity, the workshop has long served as a creative haven for artists of all backgrounds, fostering technical innovation and aesthetic exploration in printmaking. In 2002, Blackburn ensured the continuity of this legacy by relocating the workshop to the EFA, where it now operates as the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (RBPMW). Today, RBPMW continues Blackburn’s mission by providing an accessible and affordable studio environment that supports both traditional and contemporary printmaking techniques, and stewards the Robert Blackburn Print Collection.

Learn more about the organization at: www.efanyc.org | www.rbpmw-efanyc.org

Detail of Verso Del Coran,1966 , Mohammad Omer Khalil

Courtesy of the artist.

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Host or Publisher Blackburn Printshop w/ Amina Ahmed & Jenna Hamed